


Acceptance

by hiraethy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Mental Health Issues, Modern Era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 04:48:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13310889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hiraethy/pseuds/hiraethy
Summary: Modern setting. Ben Solo commits multiple homicide and is shot dead by the police during his attack. Rey revisits their memories together.





	Acceptance

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t want, by any means, to imply that mental illness equals abusive and manipulative behavior. I am merely trying to put down some angst and how I feel about this kind of dynamic. Don’t @ me please. I mean no offense.

 I met him at university.

When I joined the fencing team he was there. I had already heard of him on the campus: the scion of a known and discussed family, spearhead of the team, trained since he was a child. I was there because of a scholarship and I had signed up in the team just to test myself, for fun, and in the end I had been accepted on the first try.

After some weeks I was put on his same training level, they called me a prodigy. He didn’t call me anything until we faced each other. I bested him, and he wasn’t happy about it. The team celebrated my progress and I felt amazing, but I could feel a lingering tension. I knew that the situation between us wasn’t settled.

 

One day we were practicing longsword. I wanted to try it since I had joined, and he offered to show me the basics. I accepted because I really needed a teacher and the trainers were busy or had refused to teach me the technique so early. I was beginning to think that he had left it all behind and wanted to start anew. Then he dared me, and I took up the challenge.

It was thrilling. I felt him through his blows: he was venting, and he was taking it out on me. This didn’t scare me, nor made me yield. He was passionate, hot blooded, but his technique was smooth and refined. He was bigger and stronger, but I was ferocious and eager to test myself and when I counter attacked yet another time, I ended up wounding him. We were not wearing protective masks and I got him in the face.

The trainers and the other students came immediately and called an ambulance. I followed. Once in the hospital, I waited until I saw the doctors allowing his mother in. I recognized her immediately: same eyes, same forehead, a worried look in her eyes. When she left I sneaked into his room. I was afraid I had mutilated or blinded him, but his face was intact as he turned to me. Well, most of it. The cut was swollen, bright red under the stitches. His eyes burned alike, but without hate.

“I’m not sorry,” I said. “Look, I’m not trying to steal your spotlight. I know you were the best one and I come from nothing-”

“You’re a nobody,” he interrupted. “But not to me.” Then he immediately added, “Not to the team.”

His mother came back in. She looked at me, then at his son. Then me again.

“You’re the one who obliterated him,” she said. Before I could even think about what to respond, she turned to him. “He learned the lesson.”

 

He didn't settle suits against me.

After that evening we started talking. We started chatting outside the gym, after training. We started meeting up to hang out. His wound healed little by little and so did our feud.

We became the crown jewels of the team, we owned almost every match. Longsword became our favorite to practice together.

There was a pull between us, a link. We were gifted; raw talent hand in hand with hard work, on the same ground. We understood each other. Diverse backgrounds, different build, but we did. Elegance and brute strength met like two mouths in a kiss.

When he learned about my financial situation, he helped me with my fencing equipment. He knew I wouldn’t accept his money, so he pulled a clever move and he gave me what I needed piece by piece. He said it was stuff he didn’t use anymore and he didn’t want to throw away.

“This stuff looks new.”

“Does it?” He knew very well he couldn’t fool me, and I knew he just wanted to help and allow me to be properly equipped for training and tournaments. I felt he wanted me to be successful, so I allowed him to help me. I allowed him in.

I told him about my parents. I told him about my childhood, about the scholarship that changed my life allowing me to escape the dusty hole of a town where I used to live. He told me about his family and his heritage, about his training and his hopes for the future. He confessed that his greatest fear was not being strong or good enough to fulfill his duty. Back then I thought he was talking about making his parents and relatives proud, and it sounded beautiful to me. Now everything has fallen into place. Now I see what he was.

After the attack they studied his case and diagnosed him with several mental disorders. They filed him as a dysfunctional loner, but he was much more. He was a manipulator, a schemer, a compulsive liar. A liar- but not a faker. I knew he wasn't. I remember the beating of his heart, it rhymed with mine.

He told me I was not alone, and I wasn’t, not when we held. I am now. Better alone than in bad company, I heard them say. Good riddance, they think. What was a nice girl like her doing with a wreck like him, they ask themselves. I don't know. I know that my heart ached for belonging, for someone. It aches now because I can’t forget the good in him and I don’t want to. I know that sooner or later I will have to get him out of my system, but not now, not yet.

Bad company.

It wasn’t the sex I lived for, and neither did he. It was the nights we shared huddled, for me it was the scent between his neck and shoulder, his sweat, his warmth and my warmth. It was my head on his heart, it was our fingers and hair intertwined, our souls pouring one into another. He intoxicated me. Poisoned me.

He controlled me. I had to lie when I had plans I knew he didn’t approve. He frowned upon me when I did my own things, when I saw my own people. He never liked Finn, Poe, not even Rose. He said it was because he felt judged when he was in their presence. I think he also felt belittled by their spontaneity and their brightness.

No, he wasn’t a faker. He lived in constant fear I would betray him. Anguish tore his soul apart. He held onto me. And I onto him. I know it sounds like I was completely lost, I know I sound like he had me on the palm of his hand. He didn't, never completely. I loved him, because he had given me warmth, affection, because our pieces had fit perfectly, and he had given me peace. I loved him so much I forgot where he ended and where I started.

Our first kiss had been in his room.

We had shared a coke after training and the sweet was turning sour.

I wouldn’t go back.

I wouldn’t do it all again.

For a long time I thought he was mine, but he slipped through my fingers. I knew he was sick- that his brain was sick. I grew wary of what he was doing to me and to himself.

I wanted him so bad and for a long time I wanted to heal him, to build him up again, to suck out the rotten, to kiss his madness away. And he wanted me. Not my body, that would have been easier. He wanted so much more from me, and I refused. I didn’t allow him to drag me down with him and I don’t regret it. I couldn’t save him just like no one could, not even his parents.

Now they all talk about him like they knew him. Like they were there with him all along. It doesn’t make me angry, it makes me afraid. I fear losing him again, I fear believing their versions of the story. I don’t want to listen. Sometimes I want to scream out loud to cover their noise.

I remember when his sleep pattern changed. He became a late riser, he barely left his home, he resigned from the team, causing general displeasure. He had grown solitary. He was seeing only me and a friend of his from history class. Red hair, eyes colder than ice. He made me feel uneasy and I noticed that they didn't even like each other that much. It was like they stuck together because they had to, because of a common goal.

I helped him as I could. I stayed with him until I felt he was dragging me down.

And I’m not sorry for letting go.

It’s not my fault, and it’s not his relatives’ fault. I am sure they offered him all the love and support they could, but it wasn't enough. Now I know, now I am learning to accept that sometimes it’s like this. Sometimes love isn't enough. But I feel bad anyway.

The last time I saw him, I didn’t. I saw sickness and anger.

“Join me,” he told me that warm night. “Please,” he begged. His hand was shaking. So was his voice.

I had no idea what he was talking about. I hurt. Because I caught myself thinking ‘This isn’t him’. It was.

“Ben, don’t do this. Don’t got this way.”

“No- You’re still holding on. Let go.” I had seen this kind of anger only once in him, that time with longswords, but this time it was rawer, uglier. Back then he hadn’t scared me. He terrified me now, because I had tasted his calm, his peace, his love. There was a storm under his skin.

Like anyone before such a calamity, I feared for my life and ran away.

I warned Leia and Han. I told them to take care of him, to help him seek professional help, to watch over him, but he vanished. We searched for him, but to no avail.

We had news of him only after some weeks.

It was raining when I heard what he and Hux had done. My heart skipped a beat when I heard his father’s name among the victims.

Bad company.

My knees went weak when I saw the footage of the attack on the news.

Good riddance.

I chose not to see his body in the morgue. I changed phone number. Finn, Poe and Rose came and stayed with me for some days. I considered changing apartment, college, even changing my name. I didn’t, in the end. I didn’t allow him to take the little I had left. Even from the dead, he was trying to swallow me whole.

I stayed with Leia and Luke through the media backlash, through the lawsuits, the trials, the death threats of the victims’ families.

What could we say to these people? Our sorrow was equal.

What could we say, that we were sorry? I was, I was deep in my bones and marrow, but I never said it out loud because it wasn't my fault.

Leia told me that she wished he had killed her too, or that she would die that night, in her sleep.

What could I say to her?

His memory haunted us all, and I missed the good times but I never wished going back to where we started.

I don’t miss him whole, because he was not. He was ripped at every edge, unstable, feverish, like a dangerous power line.

I wouldn’t do it all again. _My_ love wasn’t enough, it wasn’t enough to reclaim him.

I miss the soft spots of his skin, his saliva, the warmth of his hair. The scar I gave him never grew unnoticeable, but he wore it almost proudly. I always kissed it when I had to say sorry for something. I miss the cool back of his fingers on my cheek. I miss the riddle of tiny dark spots against his pale face, a night sky in negative. He was so tall, I had to gaze up to look at him in the eye. I miss the dark cold evenings when we came back from training, hand in hand. The warm water of the shower running past our backs. The soft sheets between our intertwined limbs early in the morning, a soft light coming in through the window. I miss his smile. Back then he always smiled.

Back then maybe my love was more than enough.


End file.
